All posts tagged Orson Scott Card

“Ender’s Game” author Orson Scott Card, whose public opposition to same-sex marriage has sparked protests against a coming movie adaptation of his book, is now facing opposition from the movie studio behind the film.

Lions Gate, in a statement released on Friday, said that the company is “proud to have recognized same-sex unions and domestic partnerships within its employee benefits policies for many years” and that they “obviously do not agree with the personal views of Orson Scott Card and those of the National Organization for Marriage.” Card is a board member of the National Organization of Marriage, a nonprofit organization opposed to same-sex marriage.

A representative for Card didn’t respond to a request for a comment about the Lions Gate statement. Read More »

The movie version of “Ender’s Game,” Orson Scott Card’s popular novel, will not be released until November, and yet the film is already stirring up plenty of controversy. The LGBT science fiction fan group Geeks Out has called for a boycott of the film, in order to protest Card’s vocal and well-documented opposition to gay rights and same-sex marriage in particular.

“Do not buy a ticket at the theatre, do not purchase the DVD, do not watch it on-demand. Ignore all merchandise and toys. However much you may have admired his books, keep your money out of Orson Scott Card’s pockets,” the group declares on its “Skip Ender’s Game” website. “By pledging to skip Ender’s Game, we can send a clear and serious message to Card and those that do business with his brand of anti-gay activism – whatever he’s selling, we’re not buying. The queer geek community will not subsidize his fear-mongering and religious bullying. We will not pay him to demean, insult and oppress us.”

A representative for Card didn’t return a request for comment. But on Monday, Card reportedly released a statement to Entertainment Weekly in response to the planned boycott:

“Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984,” he writes. “With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The full faith and credit clause of the constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognised by any other state. Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute.”

Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci are two of the writer-producers behind “Star Trek Into Darkness,” but the team known as “K/O” is also producing the coming films “Ender’s Game,” “Now You See Me” and the Fox television series “Sleepy Hollow.” Not to mention the sequel to “The Amazing Spider-Man,” which they co-wrote and which is currently filming around New York.

Speakeasy talked with Kurtzman and Orci, who have been friends and writing partners for more than 20 years, starting with the television series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”

“It’s funny, it used to be a binary, like he’s Spock and I’m Kirk, in terms of personality,” Kurtzman says. “It’s not quite that simple anymore. I think when we first started, Bob was more about logic and logic flow, and I was always about the emotion of what was going on. Now, having written together for almost 22 years, our voices are in each other’s heads to such a large degree that it’s very difficult sometimes to distinguish between the two.” Read More »

Sir Ben Kingsley stars as Mazer Rackham in the highly anticipated sci-fi film “Ender’s Game,” based on the book by Orson Scott Card.

The story centers on a young military prodigy named Ender Wiggin who is taken to Battle School to be trained through war games to fight a coming alien invasion. Mazer is a half-Maori warrior and war hero who helps lead the effort to train Ender.

In the film, Mazer’s face is covered in tattoos — a detail that helped the actor get into character enormously. Read More »

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